Illinois Seeks Public Help on Unsafe Roofers

The State of Illinois is relying on the public to report unlicensed roofers, CU-CitizenAccess reported.
“We’re doing the best that we can,” Chris Slaby, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, said when asked about the apparent lack of licenses. “To catch unlicensed practice, we really rely on the public.”
Over the past five years, federal workplace safety officials inspected about 2,500 inspections of 1,800 roofing contractors in Illinois.
Those inspections found about 6,300 violations, according to the OSHA enforcement database.
But a CU-CitizenAccess review found no state records that showed that 1,200 of those contractors had the required licenses to operate in Illinois.
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Our sister publication Cal-OSHA Reporter reports that Katie Hagen is leaving the California Department of Industrial Relations after five years “in what one senior manager describes as a chaotic tenure.”
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Federal government health experts who had been working on the deadly effects of high temperatures for years have been fired by the Trump administration, Politico reported.
The entire heat team at NIOSH was fired in layoffers which take effect this week.
The agency has also stopped all public communications on heat, just before summer threatens to bring suffocating temperatures. In the past, the agency would use social media campaigns and in-person presentations with employers to raise awareness about the dangers of heat, Politico reported.
OSHA is due to hold a hearing on June 16 to let the public weigh in on the draft of a new federal heat regulation.
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The U.S. Postal Service said Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati were ranked as the top five cities for dog bites in 2024.
The 2025 USPS National Dog Bite Awareness Campaign kicked off on June 1.
Last year, the number of attacks on postal service employees rose to more than 6,000.
Los Angeles led the list with 77 incidents reported, followed by Houston with 65, Chicago with 57, St. Louis with 47 and Cincinnati with 44. The other top 10 cities were Dallas with 43; Kansas City, Mo., 40; Cleveland, 40; San Diego, 35; and Denver, 35.
On average, 16 letter carriers are bitten by a dog each delivery day. The USPS did not release data on incidents where a carrier turns the tables on a canine.
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Officials in North Dakota said the state’s “Get Home Safe” program is gaining momentum in making workplace safety a shared daily value.
From fiscal year 2023 to 2024, there were 1,086 fewer claims filed in the state, while the number of covered workers during that period rose to 10,518.
In fiscal year 2024, the state’s department of Workforce Safety & Insurance processed more than 17,000 injury claims.
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